old photo, new promo

Old photo. New promo. Just printed off a slew of these last week for the real world.
I've also just updated my website today, minus the design section which I have update tomorrow. I don't want to speak too soon, but I think summer might finally be upon us in Chicago, and I intend to have some fun. More soon!

Reason 103: My Country

Reason 103: My Country.

When my father was younger, about the age that I am now, he made several trips to South America. His first trip was just a simple high school exchange program, but it quickly shaped the years of his life that were to follow. He lived several years in transit between the United States and Brasil, and from Brasil in transit to Argentina,Chile, and Uruguay. For most of my childhood I never really knew much about these excursions other than when it comes to "futebol" we root for Brasil. That fact was quickly reinforced in 1994, when I (at that age about to turn 6) was given the holiest of holy tasks: waving a huge Brasilian flag out the window of my fathers Astro van as we drove through the streets celebrating Brasil's World Cup win in the USA. As I grew, I would hear more of my dad's escapades and meet this infamous "familia de Brasileiro" as a conscious human, and not as the child who only briefly met a strange family who I called names I didn't understand but apparently meant "Grandmother,Uncle,Aunt,and Cousin." As my time with them increased, so did my knowledge of my fathers youth. I heard stories of forgotten passports, rowdy nights in Buenos Aires, and everything in between, but there was always a hole in the story that one day was filled by my mother in a restaurant.

"Your father lived in Uruguay for a year, and he almost married a woman there."

My adult relationship with my father has not always exactly been the closest, but in that moment when my Mother said those words I saw a look in my father that I recognized. It was a recognition not based on expression, but based on emotion. In that moment I saw in my father the feeling I felt when Madeline left, when Rachel left, and when Christie left. I saw every moment of this relationship that was ancient to him and completely new news to me begin and end and then end again all in the flash of a second. And in that moment I understood why I had heard so little about my fathers year in Uruguay.

Several years later was the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. I started with high hopes for my teams (my home USA and my adopted Brasil) However, after watching the United States take a disapointing defeat to Ghana and then watching Brasil blow a lead to the Dutch and lose, my celebrations took a backseat for at least 4 more years. Then what was a tournament of 6 promising South American squads quickly turned to 1, as team after team lost to European heavyweights in the quarterfinals. All that was left of South America's hopes in the end was little Uruguay. Uruguay: A country that won 1 World Cup (and that was in 1930 when there were only 8 teams in the tournament). A country that hasn't been to the semi-finals in 50 years and who's population is smaller than the city I reside in. A country who would be facing Ghana, the team that beat my beloved homeland and who was the only African nation left in Africa's first chance to host the tournament.
The game was tied 1-1 through 90 minutes, so they went to overtime. Then, with seconds left in overtime a Ghanian player headed the ball past Uruguay's goalie, all of Africa was about to explode in jubilation, when the ball was swatted out of the goal by a Uruguayan player by the name of Luis Suarez. Suarez had saved his country and his countrymen by doing the dirtiest thing a player could do in football unless you're the goalie: use his hands. He was ejected from the game, and Ghana had a penalty kick that would surely send them through to the semi-final and into all of Africa's hearts forever...except they missed. And Uruguay ended up winning the game. And all around the world football fans collectively boo'ed Uruguay and Luis Suarez, and called them a nation of cheaters. Even though with the stakes that high, and adrenaline pumping and tired legs wearing, anyone in his position would have done the same not because of malice but because of instinct! Anyone would have done that for the country and their countrymen and for the game that was their lives.

Several days later my father and I went to a local bar to watch Uruguay eventually lose to Holland, and it amazed me, because as we sat and drank at a bar in the USA (the country who apparently doesn't care about soccer/football), I felt pride that these people were as thrilled as I was as a child to hopefully one day celebrate their country hoisting the World Cup. However, simultaneously I was disgusted to see these same people call Uruguay cheaters and even nearly brawl with the few Uruguayan supporters that filled the predominantly Dutch bar (including my father) when in their hearts they all knew they would've done the same for their team.

When Uruguay eventually lost and was reduced to fighting for third place against Germany my dad said something that struck me. "It's pretty amazing that such a small and rural country can do something so amazing isn't it?" In that moment I thought about my father's near marriage in a foreign land that I knew/know almost nothing about, I thought about Luiz Suarez and his burden, I thought about a country who's only major city(Montevideo) holds over 1/2 their population, and I thought about my own quest to define myself as a romantic, suddenly it was all encompassing. My country is Uruguay.

A tiny place at the near ends of the earth, nestled just beneath my adopted country and the country I have spent so much of my life being taught to love by my family and particularly my father, yet unable to ever really grasp because at the end of the day I am just an average mutt American of European descent. A place where my father once went looking for only what I can assume is youthful adventure. Ultimately all he found was love and the enticing prospects of life as a guacho far from American life, and all he ultimately received was a broken heart and a plane ticket back to Southern Illinois to years later move to Chicago and begin working in a restaurant and fall in love with a waitress and marry her and 23 years later watch Uruguay lose their first World Cup Semi-final in 50 years with the 21 year old product of that 23 year old love that happened to spawn with my mother, all whilst drunk-ass Dutch fans boo'ed Luis Suarez and his "Mano De Deus" that had saved a small nations hopes while chastising them to a world of once-every-4-year-American-football/soccer-experts.

Luis Suarez did what he had to do to keep his dreams and his countries dreams alive, and my father (at least from what little I know and mostly what I can infer) spent a hell of a lot of effort trying to keep his year in Uruguay to last for as long as possible. When push comes to shove both ultimately failed, but both simultaneously gained everything. Luis Suarez brought his country closer to greatness then they've been in 50 years, and my father ended up falling in love with my Mother, and since that relationship ultimately yielded me I can only say that it was a great success! Somewhere in the middle of all of this I stand in the wake of the break ups of Madeline,and Rachel, and now Christie, and my own search for a romantic identity.
All I can say is that in terms of the "romantic" country, I am Uruguayan, because this tiny country has taught me through soccer and through my father the sheer importance of not only being able to love, but to love again. When you allow yourself to do that, incredible things are possible.

Reason 102: The Soviet Union Is Dead

People express their love in relationships differently,almost as differently as two countries that are landlocked to one another can be. Take the USA and Mexico for example. They are right next to one another,and while time and trials have given them some similarities, ultimately they are completely different. They have different histories and cultures and tendencies, and yet somehow they have converged, both as territories and as modern democracies. I think the same can be said of relationships. Two completely different countries somehow find themselves connected.

I myself am still figuring out my own "country" to call home in terms of my relationships. I've been told I embody everything from the starch and isolated nature of the Czech Republic to the emotional and colorful prowess of Brasil (I suppose it kind of depends on who you're asking though).In any case, while my own romantic country remains undetermined, this much is clear to me: Rachel was the Soviet Union of my romantic endevours.

She was starch and at times cold(especially towards the end), and at all times completely fucking unpredictable. Perhaps that's why I fell for her, I was completely unaware of everything and at the same time entranced by the notion of it. Don't get me wrong she was caring and fun to be around, but she possessed these qualities in ways I suspect Mother Russia would possess when caring for her young. Perhaps that makes me the USA in this case. Sucked into a cold war of romanticism (of course I am oversimplifying the nuances of the US-Soviet conflict, but you get the picture). Bottom line, cheezy as it is, is that if a relationship is going to work there needs to be trust and communication. Rachel and I briefly grasped these difficult concepts, but like I said, it was brief.
By the end of our relationship, and then by the end of the on again,off again year that followed (one of my best and worst by the way),we had become so entangled in nonsensical bullshit that no one had any idea who said what when or to who and what it may have meant or not meant and if it had any relevance to either party involved at all.
Confusing huh?

We were the Soviets and the Americans sending spies into opposite camps (both literally and figuratively) to get info,recon,and check up on who's life was more miserable. In this game of international romantic telephone, by the time the information made it's way through the spy network to me, it barely resembled the source material. Nothing made sense but we were both perfectly content to keep up the game.(Actually in retrospect it's amazing to me that the USA and USSR didn't blow themselves to hell). In any case the real point is that all of that nonsensical bullshit could have been avoided if me and Rachel could've just sat down and talked to one another openly like adults. But the USSR/Rachel was always more interested in itself and it's own agendas and it's own series of lies and lies based on lies and when you got truth it was only a half truth. Part of me feels that that's just what I should've expected from a 19 year old who had no idea what she wanted out of life, but more so I think that she just never really actually loved me.

prelude.

{2304 Reasons Not to Love Me}

There are exactly 1,152 things that must happen in order for one person to successfully fall in love with another. However, that only covers half of the equation. The same 1,152 things must happen concurrently for the second party (and one would hope vaguely in the same time frame.) So, by process of addition, there are 2,304 things that could keep two perfectly happy individuals from falling in love. Mind you that the difference between "perfectly happy" and "in love" is basically the difference between the Israeli's and the Palestinians. "Perfectly happy" is a term for art school graduate dropouts who work at Blicks and suburban housewives who's husbands bought the 2007 model instead of the 2008(and they suspect that the savings will be spent on that cute young secretary at his office, although they have no concrete proof). "Perfectly happy" is a term for people who are perfectly miserable, but would rather have the lifeforce drained from them drip by drip than just admit that there is most likely something or someone better out there for them."Perfectly happy" is a term for people who got married around reason 2227,and they will stay "perfectly happy" in it.
It's a strange hybrid of stockholm syndrome that I'm not sure I'll ever quite understand, but it's apparently very appealing to some people. I suppose it is comforting to know you're number one to someone else in the world, hell I spent a good part of my teenage life convinced I was going to die alone. A part of me still kind of is to be honest, but it feels less like a harsh oblivion now. It's more a slow and eventual progression that might not happen, but then again it might.

My name is Oliver Miller. That's not a name that rings fairy tale ending with wife,2.5 kids, and a turkey dinner on the table. It's a name that rings mediocrity. It's say normal and dull. It says "died alone in a studio apartment after suffocating on a discount chicken pot pie!",and especially when there are 2304 bridges to cross just for a word like "love" to even come into the picture, it becomes easier to taste.

Years ago an ex-girlfriend told me that she believed that humans are only capable of truly loving one other person. ONE. You may say "i love you" to more than one person in a life time (and believe me I have), and of course this doesn't account for family members and popular indie rock singers, but there is only ONE occasion when that statement will leave your mouth and have substance to another human being. I think about what she said every now and again, and I have to say, I pray to God it's not true.
There were thousands of reasons I've loved before. Madeline De Cleene, Rachel Penn, McKenzie Schuba, Erin Brown(although she was a bitch) and all the others were a part of my life for reasons. They came in and out on my movie, made their cameo's, and then whether it be by a sudden soap opera-esque death or a gradual decline in ratings, they all left and moved onto major roles in other films. They all hurt, and they all left their marks, but none of them got to that 1152nd Reason, and that's why I was eventually okay. Eventually okay until I met Christie Jackson. She was the one that got to me. She was the one that had I had 1152 Reasons to love, and there was only one reason why she didn't love me.

{Reason 348: Waiting}

There is very little that can be said for waiting. It sucks. In fact, it is one of the absolutely most horrifying and unjust experience's that can befall any human in any form. Whether it be waiting in the Doctor's office, pondering what the other people in the lounge have or reading those stupid magazines that you really have no interest in whatsoever. Whether it be sitting in an office waiting room wondering what skills the ponce next to you has that will land him the job youre applying for, and eating little waiting room individually wrapped starbursts.
"Waiting Room." We have entire ROOMS devoted to it! This silly,annoying, little act. And we do it because we know that waiting is inevitable. It is understood that we as beings aren't that perfect, no we are far from it. We're late, we're off task, we're off track. Sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it isn't but it is well known that it will happen, and people accept it. Occasionally we try to improve habits. We set alarms and synchronize schedules. We choose fast food instead of the diner, but just as surely as Newton's apple hit the ground, we are a perpetually late species. So we accept waiting.
And we accept waiting rooms and Weekend Fun Magazine's and Guess-Who's-Got-What And Value Meals and Gravity.
Maybe that's why I accept waiting for Christie so openly.Because I have an understanding that just like death, waiting is inevitable. Although I'm not so sure yet which is worse.

At the same time, I can see now that this is different. Back when I was with McKenzie, everytime I went out I found myself looking around rooms. It wasn't like when you entered a crowded bar and tried to find your friends or anything, it was just looking.I felt like a secret agent and every time I entered a room I immediately needed to scope out each individual, identify threats, and then formulate a plan of action. Except I had no idea what the plan of action was because I had no idea why I fucking kept looking around for someone I didn't even know! One night I was meeting McKenzie at a busier club up on Huron, and even then when I had finally found her and her friends at the bar I still was randomly searching. She finally commented on it one night, and half-yelled at me, accusing me of oodling other women. We had been going out about 3 months at that point, and that's when I realized that we'd be done in another. She was great,and I liked her, but my relationship with her had pushed me into a hole that I haden't thought even existed. I was content, but not happy. And I was happy, but not content. Here I was in this perfectly normal, perfectly adequate, perfectly reasonable relationship and I fucking hated it! I was waiting all over again! Waiting for something that wasn't apparent to me, except this time the relationship had become the waiting room, but there weren't any fun guessing games to play or extrinsic articles about kayaking. and that's why I kept looking around rooms, because I was waiting for something different.
There was just a girl who's heart I knew I was going to have to break, and it sucked. But reason 348 of any successful relationship is that you should never search around a room for as long as I did once you've found the person you were looking for. It's the first sign she's not in fact, the one that you are looking for.

Reason 503: Blind and Waiting

During my brief period enrolled in graduate school in Chicago, I lived off the Racine Blue line stop. Every day I would troll the 6 blocks to the station in order to go about my daily business, as I had not yet reached a credit line stable enough for a car. The uniqueness of the Racine Blue line stop is that it's primary demographic of patrons are students of Whitney Young High School (two blocks away) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (five blocks away). Every morning and afternoon dozens of wide eyed,pimply faced high schoolers lined the platforms west end coming and going to school. Then, on the east end of the station,dozens of slightly smug(and I mean smug in a way that only a 18 year old college freshman who just left the parents suburban townhouse for the big city kind of smug) would line up waiting for the train aswell. Then, right in the middle of these two clusterfucks was me, a skinny 24 year old fuck with holes in his shoes and a ski vest underneath his jacket. 

During most of my waits I brought along a book,something a professor(or in more cases a girl) had mentioned, but most of the time I didn't read much. I found myself sitting amongst undergrads who's ranks I had just left barely two years ago, and high schoolers who I was proud to say I had surpassed intellectually, but I had my own doubts about emotionally. Watching them all participate in the same ungodly act as me, waiting, I felt like a spectator. A studio audience member or maybe even a background actor in some network show. Someone that had a general idea of what was going on but knew little of the inner workings of the big picture that was before me. 

I was blind. I was newly embittered with the bruises that the Rachel breakup had left me, and was just generally bitter about the failure that had been my female encounters during my undergraduate experience. Daily I sat there, this bitter, depressed, mold of frozen dinner nourished flesh that I could only hope would one day be considered "a man",watching these kids interact with one another. In the beginning I enjoyed these "episodes",because I watched from an inner pedestal of being older, and being a grad student (which ironically is a pedestal I have found to be universal amongst grad students), thinking to myself that I knew so much more than them about relationships. That I had already had the brash and uncivilized rejections that high school would bestow on me, and the nervous failures and complete demise of undergrad. That I had seen the firing squad and somehow come back alive, and these guppies just had no idea! 

To tell them of cheating girlfriends and heart-break would be like speaking in a foreign language. To tell them of being led on by your dream girl for months on end and then eventually dumped would be teaching rocket science. More than anything though, I think I sat on that pedastol because I envied them. Hindsight is always 20/20, and even as I remember all of the shitty things that have happened there were a few moments of triumph (and those moments are the ones that you tend to remember, because well, most peoples brains are inertly programmed to do so) So I can remember making out with Elly MacEntyre in the closet at Drew Parson's 16th birthday party. I can remember Mike Regina telling me that Nicole Adams thought I was cute, and I can remember the six weeks that followed where while I was not allowed by her to touch her breasts (even over the shirt!), I spent nearly every moment tongue tied with her dreaming of the infinite glory and majestic splendor that was underneath that white button up school shirt.

Like watching a mystery, I wanted to know every single success and failure of each and every male on the platform. I wanted to ask them if they had a girlfriend, how many girlfriends they have had,if they had lost their virginity yet, if they had how long they lasted, i wanted detailed and precise information aligned in Xcel documents with headers and footers! I wanted to know how I faired amongst these uninformed guppies. If I, the little shit that I was, could hold my head high and feel the sweetness of what to me was a win win situation. It was win win because either 

A) These pre mature boys had drama-sized their issues into something so huge that I seemed in comparison completely normal!

or that

B) These pre mature boys had the benefits of natural selection, that a natural confidence and a little luck had given them any girl they desired, and because of this I was the one with the biggest problem. I was the Duke of Depression and the Lord of Lonely!

Either of these outcomes would've been fine with me. Which is why as a 24 year old spectator, I could never understand the fine points of these kids relationships with their respective Elly MacEntyre's, their Nicole Adams, hell even their Rachels, and I certainly had no chance of understanding my own. So for nearly two years I waited even though I hated it, got on the train and then went to school, completely unaffected by the show these high school and college students gave me daily. I was blind.

Reason 87: The Two Sided Coin

i've spent a lot of time avoiding this reason. i've spent even more trying to somehow justify everything that has happened since. some time ago, back when i was in college, a girl told me she expected to find her husband in college. i being young and slightly immature, and most definitely thinking with my nieve  thought this notion was crazy, but sure enough nearly a third of my friends had married their college girlfriends within three years out of school. one of my best friends (tyler) got married on the three year anniversary of the last time i talked to my college girlfriend (don't ask me why i know that). In any case, at Tyler's wedding I was asked to make a speech, a task that daunted me and to this day I'm not quite sure how I pulled it off considering I am about as capable of public speaking as Tyler was of staying with a woman for more than three months previous to Stephanie. 

Two days before the wedding I was completely stumped as to what to say about this couple who I had known for so much of my young life. I told Tyler I didn't want to do the speech, that I had no idea what I wanted to say, and that I was extremely worried I might divulge hidden secrets of the relationship that only I, Tyler's confidante, and a select female equivalents of myself on Stephanie's side probably knew. I envisioned myself standing up at the banquet table, nervous as piss,sweating from every pore, and accidentally spewing that Steph and Tyler had a threesome with a lesbian anthropology major. Or, even worse, that Steph had cheated on Tyler some years ago when the two were on the rocks. I could see myself being thrown to the lions of the proverbial wedding. Cousins staring, Uncles saying what an ass I was, and Susan from accounting at Steph's office saying that  " it's no wonder Christie left me." Tyler, the steady son of a bitch, looked me in the eyes and said " Just talk about the first thing you thought when I told you I was going to be married." I swear to God this man should've been a General, but he makes a fine editor.

Truthfully, the first thing I thought when Tyler told me that him and Steph were to be wed was that I couldn't believe this asshole was going to be married before me. His entire life has been spent fucking like he was training for an Olympic event, and yet somehow he landed the dream girl at 22. Somehow this woman who cared for him and built her life around his after following little to no evidence that he would give a shit after the immediate fun of doggy style sex had worn off ended up being his dream girl, and ended up being his wife, and ended up being the one person in the world who could tame the wild beast that was Tyler. 

After these immediate and ill advised feelings of jealousy subsided, I had a clarifying moment, and I realized that these two were meant to be together.Tyler had fallen into a 2 sided system that differentiated themselves at a potent moment: The moment when you decide whether or not the first woman you fall in love with is going to be the woman you marry.

Tyler had decided yes, and I had "decided" no. (but more on that later).

In any case, this is, after careful reviewing of the wedding footage, my speech at Tyler and Steph's wedding:

" Friends and family, co-workers and cousins, Uncle Lenny, "Lay off the champagne!" I'm just joking...anyways. Today we witnessed two amazing people brought together under the most amazing circumstances: marriage. I've known Tyler since college, and I remember a time when this guy said he never wanted to get married. Then a girl named Stephanie walked into his life, and he said "dude, if I ever get married shoot me in the face."  To this I said..."Well...Tyler...I unfortunately don't have a gun."  And the truth of the matter is, I could've gone down to the Walmart, I could've filled out the appropriate paperwork, I could've waited the legal 4-6 weeks, and I could've shot Tyler right in the face! ...But I didnt! and that's because even when Stephanie was out at 2 am while Tyler was in my room throwing a fit because God knows what she was doing....ehhh...I didn't do that because I knew Tyler loved Stephanie. With all his heart. She was and is his only love. Cheers"

I am a god damn idiot. 

I should've never given this speech, I should've just sat quietly in a corner and let a slew of people who know nothing about Stephanie or Tyler make speeches that would ultimately mean nothing, and I should've invited Rachel.